Review
Played on: Xbox Series XReleased: 2021
At first glance, you’d be forgiven to think Tormented Souls was a Resident Evil or Silent Hill title, made in the classic, pre-rendered background, style. Complete with camera angles, survival horror gameplay and puzzles. You’d be partially right, as Tormented Souls is a obvious mix of the old Resident Evil and Silent Hill formula.
The influence is heavy, with survival horror reaching all the way back to Alone in the Dark in 1992, and it’s perhaps the best throwback I’ve played to re-capture the essence of this era of horror releases. Something I’d always hoped for, has come to fruition and I was randomly made aware thanks to an online forum.
Seemingly released without much fanfare, Tormented Souls slipped into the abyss of average budget horror titles out there. Of which, especially, Steam has and abundance of. However, Tormented Souls offers something unique, which I haven't personally seen executed as successfully as this.
What I left with on completion, was an excellent and warm, nostalgic throwback, while at the same time being creeped out by its horror. Let’s take a look.
To address the impression it leaves in its initial first minutes: You’d be forgiven to think that the short-skirted female protagonist, the b-tier intro and cumbersome voice overs, left a bitter taste of a low budget. However, from here it only gets better. Let me explain.
Firstly, search the first room you are in, more precisely the wardrobe. From it, swap over to a normal outfit and out of the awkward default outfit for the main lead, Caroline Walker. From an anime girl skirt, with a pink bow, to regular jeans and a bomber jacket. What a choice stupid piece of clothing from the developers side.
In this first room, you need to solve a puzzle to even get access to the rest of the building, how’s that for classic horror? From here, it progresses into a creepy layout of an abandoned hospital, complete with multiple locked doors requiring keys to be found. Sounds easy, until you realise there are enemies to either run away from or fight, with limited ammo and puzzles to solve.
Every room and corridor are viewed from cleverly chosen camera angles, there are even door loading sequences. Bringing home that strong sense of 32-bit styled Resident Evil nostalgia.
Once the slightly sluggish controls settle in, you begin appreciating the smaller detail. There’s a lot of interior objects, a strong creepiness to its design and a claustrophobic feel when avoiding enemies in hallways and rooms. Although it looks like a pre-rendered game, they nailed the aesthetic perfectly, it's in fact fully 3D. Allowing for clever camera movement, better lighting and more dynamic game changes. Aesthetically, it reminds of REmake, but with a more varied colour palette.
The strong side of the visuals is the atmospheric and well-designed rooms, really bringing back the Spencer mansion memories from RE1/REmake. While on the other hand, the characters and enemy design look bland and dated. It's by no way a graphically heavy hitter, but the art style depicts exactly what a modern take on pre-rendered Resident Evil would look like.
Gameplay is either controlled with tank controls on the d-pad or fully 3D movement with the analogue right stick. It’s a neat way to cater for both without having to change the controller layout. Movement is fine, if a little sluggish in animation, but the shooting mechanics are lacklustre. With a slow and unsatisfying gun sound coupled with basic enemy reaction to bullets. Then again, the old RE and SH weren't exactly packing a punch in their gun feedback either.
You get used to the simplicity of the gunplay, it’s more about the focus on getting past enemies in tight hallways with limited ammo to challenge you. The enemies are ruthless in the damage they dish out, but they're few in number, further building their tension when they appear. Just remember to conserve ammo, they're tough to take down and, if you don't thoroughly search each room, the ammo can be extremely limited.
For those unaware of this type of layout, it’s about slowing unlocking more access to a building through finding keys and solving puzzles or obtaining objects to help unlock previously locked areas. A sort of Metroidvania in its layout, anyone familiar with Resident Evil 1 to 3 will instantly feel at home with this structure.
There’s an obvious, and neatly so, nod to Silent Hill too, outside the obvious and clever use of a torch. Within the game there are portals that take you to an alternative dimension of the hospital. A darker, worn down and rusty dimension. Bringing back the swaps between reality and the other world in the SH series. I’m glad these portals never go overboard though, with the entire hospital available, just small segments. They never overstay their welcome and it’s cool to see the unsettling, darker versions of familiar rooms.
The balancing act of being heavily inspired and playing on the strings of nostalgia is a tricky one. Tormented Souls heavily leans towards nostalgia and without the experience of the old RE and SH games. I’m guessing newcomers may be put off by its basic gameplay mechanics and key-unlocking layout. However, it’s a neat way to try the experience of RE and SH in modern times, and if it sparks your interest the transition over to the old classics shouldn’t be so steep of a learning curve!
Would I recommend it over the HD version of REmake for newcomers to the genre though? No, the latter has more difficulty options and doesn’t rely so much on the player knowing the genre prior to playing. Puzzles are simpler in REmake too.
It’s definitely a title for old-school horror fans. While at the same time I must stress that it holds a candle of its own too. I never felt it became too much of a RE and SH tribute. The stories and atmosphere in all these games are different from each other. I did enjoy all the nods to the old titles, but for someone unaware they don’t feel they're missing any references.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my playthrough. The story is simply presented but captivating enough to keep me excited. The real star of the show here though, is the setting and look of the game. Eagerly you want to explore more of the hospital, it's one of the few games that successfully recaptures the atmosphere of the Spencer mansion from the first Resident Evil.
A solid survival horror with a great throwback to a bygone era in visuals, game mechanics, layout and presentation.
